


Green Thumb (Labyrinthine Lalonde Mix)

by a_mere_trifle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Analysis, Conversations, F/F, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Introspection, Needless Complications, Neurosis, New Universe, POV Second Person, Present Tense, procreation, sustainability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_mere_trifle/pseuds/a_mere_trifle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a question of sustainability.<br/>Rose and Jade talk about the future of the new world. "I mean, we made this universe and everything in it. Surely we can make something as simple as a few tomatoes?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Thumb (Labyrinthine Lalonde Mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caledfwlchthat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caledfwlchthat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Green Thumb](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986065) by [caledfwlchthat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caledfwlchthat/pseuds/caledfwlchthat). 



You're not entirely certain why this task fell to you, except, of course, that you're the one John came to. And if you actually devote much thought to the question of why that occured, it's not that difficult to puzzle out. Dave is still utterly exasperated with him, as, to hear him tell it, all of their conversations inevitably devolve into Dave beating his head against the brick wall that is John's rudimentary notions of human sexual fluidity. John's always been the kindly sort, though, so you hope this phase won't last too much longer. Dirk is practically a stranger to her; Jane is little better, and family to boot. Jake is practically a grandson to her, and that's the problem; besides, John would hardly ask a boy to perform a social task of this sort. Which, from what you've heard of Jake's social history, may be for the best for all involved. Roxy, he would rather devote her time elsewhere, which is an idea you don't want to face at the moment. And the trolls (not to mention Calliope) are still aliens to him, somehow. He's never lived with them, until now; you suppose allowances have to be made.

So when he said, "No one seems to have seen Jade in a while-- could you maybe check up on her for me?", of course he said it to you.

(Of course, he could have gone himself. But there's an awkwardness lingering there you can hardly blame him for avoiding, not without shattering the glass walls of your greenhouse with your stones.)

So, speaking of greenhouses, here you are. Not a proper greenhouse, you suspect, but airy and glass-windowed and bright. She's surrounded by seedlings, a clipboard in her hand, and you can't really knock, so you quietly clear your throat. "May I come in?"

She turns, eyes the brightest green in this place, with an easy smile. "Oh, hi Rose!" she chirps. "Yeah, sure, come on in. I'm not really doing anything that important."

You wince a little; that cuts close to home, though she'd have no idea of that. "I can't help thinking we all feel that way these days. But never mind that, for now. What are you up to?" She must be up to something; clipboards are hardly recreational devices.

"I'm trying to get pumpkins to grow in my garden," she says, and frowns. "But it's turning out to be harder than I thought!"

"Really? I thought you were quite an experienced hand at gardening." It was even in her screenname, after all.

"Well, I've done it for as long as I can remember... my grandpa showed me how to look after the garden when I was small. And my plants were doing fine until John became my server player..." She grimaces; you wonder if it's just from memory, or if the weight of three years alone is still heavy on her shoulders. Friendly John might be, but you're beginning to wonder if empathy is his strong suit.

"I expect John's tender ministrations would be a traumatic influence for anything dependent on having a stable configuration in your house," you commiserate, an easy point to score-- but you're throwing stones, again, and this doesn't seem the place. "But in retrospect, I'm not really one to talk. My inaugural action upon booting up as his server player was to completely demolish his bathroom."

Jade laughs; "Yeah, that's exactly how it went! He dumped all my plants off the balcony without even asking. He needed the room for important equipment, but it still sucked..." She sighs. "Anyway, now that we have a little more time to ourselves, I'm trying to replant my garden and restore it to its former glory."

"Hmmm. Your garden set a most exacting standard, if I recall." Which you don't, really; you hardly got a chance to see it, but she'd talked about it. You remember those conversations, even if they were lives and worlds ago, even if you only half believed them at the time. And of course, it's another point to score, another "in", another gentle pry to see if anything is wrong. You're still a Strider-Lalonde, after all. "Reconstructing it could be a difficult task even under the most auspicious circumstances."

"Unfortunately, these are rather less auspicious than that." Jade puts down her clipboard, dusting off her hands with another sigh. "We don't have many good materials to work with right now! The Earth was pretty soggy from the oceans the Condesce had flooded it with... There was still life left in the ocean, but the biosphere took a long time to recover from the shock, and most of the good food supply items are really hard to find now."

"Seriously?" You blink; this isn't a problem that had occurred to you, and you curse your perpetual failure to See. "Aren't we supposed to have literally godlike powers at this point? I mean, we made this universe and everything in it. Surely we can make something as simple as a few tomatoes?"

"We tried a few tricks!" says Jade, and, hearing "we", you curse John as an idiot. She hasn't been as reclusive as all that, and her next words confirm it: "Those motifs Dave and I used to fast forward the recovery process, and Jane joining in with her life powers to encourage growth... the problem is that biodiversity simply isn't what it once was. A lot of the land plants just died out!"

So John's mission was a fool's errand, but you seem to have stumbled across something rather bigger. "Hmmm. So, no source genetic material. That's clearly a problem."

And an overly familiar one; but you wrench your mind away from that. You're careful what you let yourself think about, these days. "But what about Dave? Can't he rewind to a time before the floods?" 

"He can't rewind to any time before the earth entered our session, since that's his first point of contact with it in his own timeline." Jade frowns; you wonder if she's questioned it, like you are now. It sounds plausible enough, and you're in no position to gainsay him, but you can't help but remember the bonfire that evening, the smoke the red hood sent up when it finally caught. _"Fuck this,"_ Dave had said, _"fuck that, and fuck you."_ That last at Vriska, but you're sure that's a tale and a half of its own. Dave hasn't given up his powers, but he is loath to use them if given any other option. You can understand it, in a way, but most of you doesn't quite understand the notion of renouncing power.

It's a moot point, though; Dave's helped as much as he's going to. You furrow your brow, trying to think of other options. "What about Roxy? She recovered Kanaya's Matriorb, after all. Can't she just... I don't know, manifest a tomato?"

"We thought of that--" _John, you ignorant slut--_ "--but she has to have something to work with. I don't think she's even ever seen a whole tomato before! Remember, she grew up well after the Earth was flooded."

You do remember, and she shouldn't have to tell you that. You push down the irrational flare of resentment. "That... would present difficulties for her."

"I tried to talk to her about what she could do," Jade says, and why did Roxy never tell you about this? "I don't really know how the voidy thing works, but from what she told me, it sounds like in order to manifest anything from the void, she needs to hold a complete description of the thing she's trying to call up in her head. That makes biological things really difficult; she needs the information equivalent of the whole genetic code."

But she'd had no knowledge of the matriorb, surely? You're no expert on troll genetics, but that must surely have been more genetically complex than a tomato. 

Unless it wasn't. How should you know? That's too close to the conversation you don't want to remember right now. "Which brings us back to the problem, as you framed it. No biodiversity, so no genetic code, so no tomatoes from nothing. Lost information, rather than lost materials."

"Yeah, pretty much. So it looks like no tomatoes for right now!" Her eyes dart toward the corner, the long stakes rising from barren pots. An empty nursery. "We did try to plant the one vegetable she could make easily..."

You don't need to be told what that is, and you groan at the mere thought of it. "Wait, wait. Don't tell me. Roxy's pumpkins don't grow on new Earth. Because they're associated with the Void aspect and are therefore doomed to irrelevance and obscurity." Pumpkins are inscrutable: this is universal law.

"Well, I tried planting some pumpkin seeds anyway, just to see what would happen," says Jade, and she laughs for a moment at the look of dread you can't quite hide before sobering again. "The vines do okay for a while, but then they sort of shrivel and die. They never really even get to the point of bearing fruit."

"So, why shouldn't we be more worried about all this?" you ask, with a frown. Why are you only hearing about this now? "In fact, why isn't this urgent, four-alarm emergency material? Wouldn't it be ironic for us to beat several supposedly invincible foes, only to be laid low by an adversary as prosaic as starvation?"

_Why are you so goddamn married to the idea of everything being a story, anyway?_

"Well, everyone should be okay for quite a while, actually," says Jade, walking over to the water cooler in the corner. As if she, too, were mocking your silly notions of narration. "It's only been a couple of months, after all! Roxy and Dirk have years worth of supplies in their houses. I've got a pretty serious stash too since I've had to live by myself all these years!"

"Yes, we know. Roxy especially has been very generous." You grimace. "But to be honest, we're all getting somewhat weary of pumpkin pie, pumpkin curry, pumpkin soup, pumpkin chickpea tagine... In the face of an unstemmed onslaught of voidy orange gourds, expiration from malnourishment seems salubrious by comparison."

Jade laughs, offering you a paper cup, sipping at it herself when you demur. "It's probably just because that's all she knows how to cook!"

Of course it is. How would she know how to cook anything else? God, the wreckage that is your lives. "I will neither confirm nor deny the truth of that proposition," you say, out of a vague urge to defend her against what isn't even any sort of attack. "But wait! Good thing we have Jane to bake for us!"

Jade laughs-- she's been around enough to taste Jane's cooking, John is such an idiot-- and you have a flash of inspiration. "And so it came to pass that after my seventeenth pumpkin muffin, I threw up my hands in disgust and went to find you," you lie. "I didn't necessarily think you would have something helpful to say about this predicament in particular. I just wanted to talk to someone I hadn't seen in a while, who might be able to relate to some of my frustration. And it occurred to me that that someone was basically you."

Jade smiles, and you take the opportunity to press further. "You've been pretty scarce around the proverbial campfire lately. Is this what you've been up to for the past few weeks?"

"Well, once I discovered that things weren't growing right, I realized it could become an issue pretty soon! So I've been hard at work running experiments to get a better idea of what we need to do. I tried some samples from my seed bank in the basement... including tomatoes!"

"Wait, what? You actually have one of those?" You frown. "Doesn't that solve the whole biodiversity problem right there? Why are we still having this discussion?"

"Because those seeds died too! They get plenty of sunlight and fresh water, and I brought some soil from new Earth to plant them in, but they all sort of-- withered mysteriously away." She waves a hand irritably, turning toward the rows of seedlings. Looking closer, the ones near you do seem a little pale.

"Can't Jane help with that?"

"She can help speed up the process-- and in fact I did get her to boost the growth rate a bit, otherwise I would never have figured even this much out by now-- but the plants still can't grow if they don't have what they need."

"Why don't you just give the seeds to Roxy? This really seems like the sort of thing she ought to be able to handle. She appearified a matriorb out of nothing, to be sure." Being overly defensive, again. She's not your daughter, and you wronged your mother so. You owe her that much.

"Well, if you worked with her, you might be able to help get the genetic codes into her head..."

"A Light/Void motif? Twisted. I like it."

_"Are you ever gonna be able to look past our stupid bullshit roles in that bullshit game?"_

It wasn't just a game, though. It was-- the universe itself. If that doesn't have any meaning, what does?

"But the problem is in scaling up production and making it sustainable," says Jade. "Why should Roxy make everything by hand all the time? It would be much better if we could grow things. And solving this problem means figuring out why we can't yet."

Sustainable. You wince. The problem with having Roxy make everything by hand (other than whether that workload is fair to put on her) is that the system will fall apart if it survives her. 

That is, of course, an "if".

You babble to push the knowledge back out of your head. "Uggghhh. What a conundrum. Egg, meet chicken. Chicken, egg. What else have you tried?"

Jade doesn't seem to notice, or doesn't seem to mind. She gestures at the windows, at the view outside them; she picked a lovely meadow for herself, clear and sunny, but with the forest well within view. "Well, you can see there are plenty of trees here on LOFAF, so I tried putting a few plants in the local soil-- with pretty much the same results; the local plants didn't do too well in the Earth soil either!"

You nod slowly, digesting the information. "I guess that's also to be expected. Given that these planets were all originally game constructs in the first place, made material when we imported them into the new universe we currently inhabit." You sigh. It's been a while since you went back to LOLAR. Maybe you should stop by on your way home. "Their main redeeming feature being that they had our old Earth houses on them."

Jade laughs; you hadn't really expected her to agree. You're not even sure you agree. "But they might come in handy later on anyway."

"All right, what next?" Casually dropping the biggest question in your life. "Are we any closer to understanding what's really going on?"

Jade allows the "we"; she's usually generous like that. "Well, thinking about what could be different, our sun looks pretty similar to Earth's old sun, so I doubt it's a problem with the radiation spectrum. The details of the soil chemistry could be different, or the bacteria in the soil, like the ones that beans use to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and turn it into plant stuff... both the nutrients and the bacteria could have changed a lot on Earth after the floods. Either one might be enough to mess up plant growth." 

She taps her fingers against the table, irritably. "Unfortunately I don't have the equipment or the knowledge to look into those in more detail. My main specialty is physics, so that's what my lab is set up for! Gardening has mostly been just a hobby until now..."

"Hmmm." Might someone else? It sounds like she's sought help from most of you (save, obviously, John) already. "And do we have any biologists among us?"

Jade frowns, looking insecure. You hadn't meant it to be a trick question. "Um... actually... I don't know?"

"Neither do I?" You're pretty sure it would have come up at some point in those three years, but you want to draw her out on the subject.

"Well... I don't know of anyone with knowledge who can help us out. John did our ectobiology, but he's not great with Earth biology..."

_In so many fucking ways,_ says the Dave inside your head. You suppose three years living as siblings will do that to you, but, despite his crucial role in your self-questioning, you do wish he'd shut up.

"Dave and Karkat don't have much expertise there either. Jane and Roxy are nice but I don't know them that well. And the others..."

Jade sighs, leaning back against the table. "I still don't really know well at all," she admits, unhappily. "I slept through most of the catch-ups and kind of fell behind."

Your heart twinges in sympathy; you're sorry you never thought of it before. Jade's always been so friendly; you hadn't thought she'd need any help getting to know new people. But she'd also grown up alone on an island with only a dog for company, hadn't she? And followed it up with a three-year trip with salamanders for company. And Davesprite, possibly, but that could hardly have benefited her mental health. "Didn't you talk a lot with Kanaya about frog breeding? She mentioned she helped you out with that at some point."

"Oh!" Jade brightens, half hopeful, half guilty. "Yeah, I guess I did. She was really helpful and friendly!"

"But I take your point," you say, and sigh, leaning against the opposite table, careful not to jostle the seedlings. "And this is kind of my point too: that we all seem to have fallen back into our old patterns."

"We have?" says Jade, and _We?_ says the Dave in your head, who's been doing his best to burn the patterns down; but you ignore him. You mean "I". You're aware of it.

"It's understandable, given what we've been through. After three years of mind-numbing boredom in transit, flanked by two frenetic episodes of largely reactive activity focused on just trying to survive, much less thrive, we've certainly earned ourselves a chance to sit back and not have to worry about existential threats anymore. But I think none of us thought carefully about what we'd find after we finally walked through that door. We've hacked our way through all the short-term crises, but they were all defined for us by the challenges of the moment. Now the pressure is off, and we face the harder task of defining the long-term goal of living without those constraints."

Your nails press into your palm; you're frowning, pensively. "Not too long before the final battle," you admit, "I threw a kind of... Hissy fit, I guess. About that crazy cat-sprite version of myself."

You say that last phrase quickly; you still prefer not to consciously admit her existence to yourself, which you're also perfectly aware of. Repression isn't always a bad thing; it can be an essential coping mechanism. You do not want to think about her. You do not want to know. 

Jade winces in sympathy, though. She had a sprite-self floating around too, at some point, didn't she? It was for so short a time, so long ago, amid such distractions, that you'd entirely forgotten. Perhaps she, like Dave, might understand.

"I couldn't see a reason for it to exist, in the context of a carefully constructed series of challenges for us to overcome. Call it character-building... like arcs in a narrative." 

You smile, wryly. "Dave didn't miss a beat, and told me we didn't have "arcs", we were just human beings. And when I think back about my own experiences, and how open-ended they actually were despite the temptation to think of them as linear and purposeful-- about all the times I deliberately steered off the rails leading us consistently towards what in many other timelines became a tragedy of classically Hellenic proportions--I see he was totally right."

Not that you have any intention of admitting that to him yet. You don't want him to get entirely insufferable about it. "But we're not really ready to think about ourselves that way yet."

_"We"?_ says the Dave in your head. Of course you mean "I". You just don't feel up to admitting it so baldly. It's probably just as obvious as if you had, anyway. "What do you do when the constraints are lifted, and you're staring there at a blank page, an empty canvas, a featureless block?" You stare into the endless sky, feeling bleak. "How to narrow down the infinite possibilities of what could be, and start making something that will be into something that is?"

"I see what you mean!" says Jade, and you wonder if she really does. "I guess... you just start writing? Or drawing? Or whatever you want?"

You sigh. Simple and easy were never synonyms. "I know, right? But, you know. What if it sucks? What if, in fact, it is objectively worse than any eleventh-hour solution you improvised to the problems you faced when the race was on and the stakes felt higher?"

You want to laugh at yourself. Is that even possible?

"Well then, you try something else!" says Jade.

It might be that simple. It's never that easy.

You shake your head. It's time for a safer subject. "Let me tell you about what we've all been trying so far."

Jade nods, pulling up lawn chairs for you both. You accept gratefully, sinking down into the rickety plastic. "Construction on New Can Town is going forward. Dave, Karkat, Terezi, and the Mayor are jointly overseeing that process. But it's slow and awkward. Our alchemical rigs still seem to function in our new environment, which I guess makes sense because it's still a universe SBURB made." 

Whatever the reason, you'd be pretty well doomed otherwise. But no need to dwell on might-have beens. "But we're desperately low on grist, since we "blew our load," as Dave rather crudely described it, on the Ultimate Alchemy. The only way to acquire new grist is to cannibalize existing items. So of course, the most plentiful kind of grist available is Build Grist, which we obtain by shaving floors off of our absurdly overgrown domiciles." You flash her an ironic look. "The SBURB cursors are also comically accident-prone, as you know, so the plumbing will no doubt have to be installed by hand."

Jade laughs; she's good at responding to cues. You go on. "Occasionally there are All-Strider soccer matches. Dirks vs. Daves, splinter-selves against stable-loop instances. That's entertaining but requires some very observant referees." And you have to catch them both in a particular sort of mood; it's practically like watching an eclipse slide into place.

"Roxy and I have had some really great ecto-filial catch-up time, when she wasn't cooking pumpkin for us, or trying to help the carapaces and various land consorts adjust to Life After Victory." Which you don't begrudge her. She's so much kinder than you've ever been; you don't deserve to be resentful of that. "And I haven't talked much to our other post-scratch relatives. John? I have no idea what that dear boy is up to." _Other than dragging me into his idiocy._

You hurry past the lie, perhaps unwisely. "Kanaya has mostly been relaxing. Designing dresses for us, taking walks in the sunshine. Reading the old pulp gothic novels I have cached under my bed." Listening to your CD collection. Yelling at Vriska. Determining just how much fang she can safely put into a kiss. But you won't mention any of those things.

"Hmmm," says Jade, as if she knows what you're eliding. "That all sounds like fun to me! So she hasn't used the matriorb yet?"

You wince. "No," you answer. "She says she'll take it out of storage soon. When conditions are more favorable for reviving the troll species. But she won't specify what those conditions are supposed to be."

You sigh; after the lies, you owe her some truth, and you can't think of anyone better to confess to. "It makes me kind of nervous, actually."

"How come?"

"I'm still trying to process that." And yet, having someone ask the question, you can suddenly begin to come up with an answer. "But I guess it's because I'm uneasy about what it will mean for our own relationship. It's a bit like thinking about having a hundred million children, with all the attendant responsibility for each one, without even being sure if you're ready to take care of one child yet. When you still feel like a child yourself, in fact."

_"Focusing on 'aspects' and bullshit like a teenager with an online quiz..."_

"And I feel like when she gets around to it, it'll put pressure on us to repopulate the Earth with members of our own species," you continue, wincing. "Despite the sense of crushing responsibility I feel to contribute towards that goal, I'm not sure if that's what I want. Now... or ever." 

You look at Jade; she doesn't look judgmental. "Roxy may be all the kids I really feel like having." And possibly more, but that's far out of your hands. "Is that selfish of me?"

"No, I don't think so, Rose," says Jade, slowly. "For one thing, the trolls have always had kind of weird ideas about reproduction, at least judged by human standards. Especially Karkat and his shipping grids."

You look away. Three nights ago, the topic had come up, and you'd stared at a grid of your own, bleakly. Two families. Maybe a third if you counted Mr. Egbert, but that was a hideous thought. All the human DNA you had available.

_"I can see how that could get awkward,"_ Kanaya had said, and you'd almost blown up at her, but you'd thought first, thank heavens. You'd thought first, and your brain had managed not to embarrass itself for once, and you'd told her: incest was not just a meaningless social taboo, for humans. There were very real genetic consequences to intermingling too few sets of DNA. Quirks. Disorders. Abortions. Every flaw magnified a hundred fold. And god, looking at the Strider-Lalondes, the unintentional incest may have magnified and overlayered your flaws to a horrifying degree already.

When you'd looked into her eyes, you'd realized she hadn't understood before. Incest meant all but nothing to troll genetics. It hadn't occured to her to consider genetic diversity as a problem.

And if it was, your species was doomed. 

"Are you sure you aren't imposing your idea of motherhood on Kanaya?" says Jade, and you wrench your mind back to the here and now. "Maybe this won't be as big a deal for you two as you think?"

"I wondered about that," you answer. "But given my own life experiences, I have only the faintest notion of what constructive motherhood really looks like, anyway. It could just be the opposite of everything Freud suggests." Which is likely enough; his credibility as regards women in particular has been widely assailed. "Nevertheless, that leaves quite a wide margin for error."

"Why don't you just talk to her about it? Go tell her exactly what you told me just now!"

"I guess... That's actually what a mature adult would suggest?" Which doesn't make it any easier, but it's probably time you had the conversation instead of hinting around it. "Thanks, Jade. I feel both grateful, and kind of silly."

"Well, like you said," says Jade, "we still have a lot to figure out about our own lives. And there aren't really any right or wrong answers anymore!"

You're reasonably certain that there are, in fact, still wrong answers, but you think you understand what she's getting at. No narrative arcs. Maybe that's a particularly difficult idea for a writer to come to terms with.

"We haven't ended up living lives anything like we expected," Jade goes on, and you wonder what she did expect, once upon a time. What did she think was going to happen, before the game began? What did she think was going to happen after Prospit fell? On the long, dark ride to the final battle? Has Jade, for all her initial prognostication, ever gotten anything she expected? Your heart aches for her, but you don't dare broach the topic. 

And she's still talking, anyway. "So maybe we can just respect that and live them for ourselves?"

Jade sighs, and looks down at her ruby slippers in the grass. "I don't know," she admits, and you wonder if that's hard for her. But she lifts her head, pulling her mouth into a smile with a visible effort. "I'm sure we'll know what to do when the time comes!"

You suppose you can't blame her. Faith has worked for her so far. "I hope you're right," you say, because even if you find it difficult to believe, you certainly hope it will be so. "I've been searching for answers, but it's hard to have patience with the search. Ever since we entered the new universe, I've felt cut off from my sources of Light."

Dave would argue that you shouldn't have been relying on arbitrary game constructs to begin with. The point of contention between you is whether the game contracts were, in point of fact, arbitrary. He's convinced that they were, and given what his put him through, you find it hard to blame him. And yet. You are certain that there's meaning to be derived from it all.

Dave thinks that's exactly your problem. You think it's more complicated than that. Which is in itself also a good candidate for "your problem".

You shake your head; it's time to go back to undisputed fact. "I underestimated how much I relied on extracting information by means of eldritch sorcery, rather than by carefully crafting questions designed to pierce the veil of ignorance by virtue of their form alone."

"Yeah," says Jade, looking sad, "I kind of know what you mean. I haven't really dreamed much without the clouds of Skaia, so I've thrown myself back into other things I used to enjoy... in order to give myself something real to focus on."

"Exactly." You squeeze her hand, wondering why on earth it took an invitation from John to make you think of coming out here, why you never have before. 

She squeezes it back, and for a few moments, you both sit there, staring into the sky.

_"Sometimes I wish you could leave things alone,"_ Kanaya said once. But you break silences, you tease out issues, you fill blank pages. It's what you are, and you don't know how to stop, don't know if you want to.

"So, here's what I've been thinking," you say. "We're in a new and unfamiliar universe. It seems like Skaia, in its usual inscrutable and impersonal way, has generated the laws of that universe for us, based on some criteria we can only assume have something loosely to do with us and our personalities and intentions."

Jade nods. Dave would get you involved in a whole tangent here, but Dave isn't here, and you don't know why you compulsively undermine your own arguments. "But those laws remain mysterious to us," you continue, "both as Earth dwellers, and as SBURB winners. In one sense, we know all there is to know about our new universe. It's a frog that you bred specifically for the purpose of being our home, which came into being with a Vast Croak a scant two months ago by our own personal clocks. But as denizens of the universe, seeing it from the inside..."

You spread your hands in a helpless shrug. "We have no idea how big it is, what it's made of, what its ultimate fate will be, or how it's supposed to work. Nor do we really understand our place in it. We've got much more influence than we had over old Earth, and we have no reason to believe yet that our god-tier immortality has expired along with its function in SBURB..."

And you're not inclined to test the theory very strenuously. Though with all the Striders here, you may find out reasonably soon anyway, if the universe has the same infatuation toward their poetic deaths as it did before. "But not all of our powers seem to work here, or at least work exactly the way we would expect them to in our SBURB sessions. What are the limits of our influence, and why? Are they circumstantial, like the paucity of grist? Or are they more fundamental, like the loss of some of your Space powers after the Green Sun was destroyed?"

Perhaps you shouldn't have brought that up? Though it was unavoidable. But there's a point you're driving at, one clear thing you see. "I think it's high time we stepped up our game once more. To wring answers to our questions from the universe's very fabric, increasing our mastery until we truly are the gods we purport to be. And can shape this universe into something marvelous and worthy of the aspirations we ought to have held in creating it."

Jade is silent for a few moments. "Well, Rose," she says, "that sounds like a noble and worthy goal! But I hope you won't have to blow too many things up to achieve it?"

As your breath catches in your chest, you wonder what you did to piss her off.

Then again, she's Jade. It could have been an accident; it could be an innocent joke. If it were John, he'd probably have no clue what he'd blundered into. But this is Jade, and Jade can be cannier than that. Isn't always, but certainly can be, and thus you are trapped. Did she mean to stab you in the heart, or was it accidental?

Either way, there's only one way to react. So you laugh, a little too loudly. "No. No indeed. I hope to be somewhat less... wanton with my destruction this time."

"Tell you what," says Jade, "you and I seem to be the most interested in doing science so far." She's grouping you together; surely she couldn't have been angry. "Exploring and developing the new universe will be a big project. It's going to take a lot of scientific knowledge that we might have learned in school if only we'd ever gotten to attend it. And perhaps quite a lot that we never would have learned. We'll have to figure out a lot of this stuff for ourselves!"

You nod. From your vague recollections of high school curricula, universe frogs were not a topic of study. Though you imagine that would have made dissection courses rather more perilous.

"I'm really interested in understanding why plants won't grow here," says Jade, "in terms of the biology and ecology of post-flood earth and of the post-victory medium planets. But I don't really see myself as a coordinator-- at least, not without specific goals or projects to work on. You've always been driven, and now you have a vision as well! Maybe this is a good situation for you to take the lead?"

Is she trying to get rid of you? Suggesting you be promoted to your level of incompetence? Just being a kind friend, because not everyone's psyche is as labyrinthine as yours? "Maybe it is?"

Jade nods, encouragingly (or pretending to be). "Hopefully John won't get too annoyed about it, given his de facto status as our leader in the previous session. Then again, he did always seem to wear the mantle of leadership lightly, unlike, say, Karkat." Additionally, you don't especially care what he thinks about the matter. Should he desire authority, he can feel free to earn it himself; and-- "I doubt he'd be too troubled by the transfer, or delegation, of proximate authority. Especially when what we need most right now is information, which, as a Seer of Light, I feel uniquely poised to provide."

"That's the spirit!" cheers Jade. "Why don't you go" (that is in fact her aim) "see who knows something about Earth biology, or troll biology" (she wants you to go talk to your girlfriend already) "in detail?" (you don't know anymore how many of your insights are actually insights and how many mere dramatic embellishments). "I'll try to rig up an electron microscope-- assuming electrons are even things here!-- and whatever other equipment we might need to make progress." 

She frowns thoughtfully. "In fact, see if anyone can help with engineering too?"

It sounds reasonable. It also sounds like a way to get you out of her house. It could be both; it could be either. _Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay._

"Absolutely," you answer, regardless. "I'll try to assist in generating new hypotheses to test. Even if I'm not fully conversant in the individual knowledge areas, I have a good sense of what should follow from what. We're going to need all our combined talents to make this go."

You stand; she follows suit, a little too quickly. Even if she does want you to leave, there's no reason why you shouldn't indulge her. "I'll be back soon."

"See you later!" says Jade, and sees you off with a cheery wave. You look back over your shoulder; she's taken up her clipboard again, looking at the plants with a frown.

You're not sure she actually needs you for this; you're not sure she needs you at all. Then again, there are more good reasons to keep people around than strictly needing them.

It's all speculation. At this point, there's only one answer-- and that is to go find out.

-

"I'm home," you call, slipping your shoes off at the door. Kanaya's experimenting with cooking again; you're still not entirely sure what you thought of the "cinnamon" rolls. They at least tasted nothing like pumpkin, but you're not entirely certain, other than that, what they did taste like. You're not sure all of the ingredients quite agreed with your human neurochemistry. But there seem to be no lingering ill effects.

"You're early," says Kanaya, though she doesn't seem to mind. She puts down the Mills and Boone to greet you with a hug.

"I found myself at that most annoying part of a task, where one has a great deal to do, but not enough time to complete any meaningful chunk of it." You sit down at the kitchen table with her, picking up one of the decorative gourds idly. Kanaya's drawn a face on this one, with a gaping, fanged grin. You know you ought to inquire about troll jack o'lanterns, but you're not entirely sure you're prepared for the answer.

"Oh?" she says. "I thought you were visiting Jade?"

"Yes, because apparently John had failed to inquire amongst the perhaps sixty percent of the population who knew exactly what she was doing." You sigh, massaging your temples. John's relationships, or mismanagement thereof, are becoming a problem, and you're going to have to talk to him about it. 

"Somehow, I am not entirely surprised." Kanaya sips from her teacup. Red, today. It's when she goes for blues or purples that you know she's particularly irritable. "You will forgive any inadvertent aspersions upon your friendleader, but he seems to have certain blind spots."

"That he does." But you can hardly begrudge him after he saved you all. "It turns out we're facing a potential food shortage."

"Oh?"

"We're having difficulty growing any plants. Do you happen to know any horticulturists?"

Kanaya smiles wryly. "Alternia tended toward the obligate carnivores," she says. "But I can tell her what I know of the art."

"I'll have to search the archives," you realize. "I'm not sure how much was archived, but there's got to be a way. If the servers picked up GameFAQs and Pesterchum and not Wikipedia, I'll have to forgive Dave everything bad he's ever said about SBURB."

"I suspect you already have."

"That's probably true," you agree. Your eyes steal toward the closed notebook on the table. "She said that a lot of the planet's biodiversity was lost in the floods."

Kanaya's eyes follow yours, and she puts down her cup to hold your hand. She can follow your thoughts easily enough. Perhaps her fashion fascination helps somehow; it must be like being Ariadne, threading her way through the Labyrinth. 

"It is possible," she says slowly, "that it is not quite so bleak. SBurb selected you carefully, after all."

_There's no proof of that,_ says the Dave inside your head. You ignore him. "I'm not certain that any amount of careful selection could impede the damage done by generations of mandatory incest," you say, "though I suppose ectobiology is still a mystery to me."

"Being a paradox clone might imbue one with special properties," says Kanaya. "I know of no one who's tested it."

"Nonetheless," you say, and shiver. "The requirements to ensure genetic diversity... the shipping grid, as it were..."

"You are aware," Kanaya says carefully, "that I wouldn't mind? It is somewhat strange to me to imagine you not having any relationships with anyone else. It seems vaguely unhealthy, I must admit."

She's been reading more novels than you thought. Of course she'd have considered human norms, though; Kanaya has such empathy. It's one of the traits you prize most highly in her. "It's not that," you say, "it's imagining those relationships. John? Just--" You shake your head. "Even broadening one's scope past love, I find it difficult to visualize him like that. Jake? I barely know the poor boy, and I think he's sworn off relationships forever."

"Someone should talk to him about that," sighs Kanaya, "but I doubt he would take such advice from me."

"Mr. Egbert--" You just shake your head. "And what other options are there?"

"What about-- oh," says Kanaya, with a frown. "I forgot about that sex and reproduction thing again."

You smile. In some ways, you reflect, it might be nice to live in a world where such concerns were so irrelevant. Most other aspects of their world, however, seemed rather horrific. 

But you aren't on their world now, are you? 

"How are you going to go about it?" you ask, curiously. Which is a vague enough question that Kanaya can only raise her eyebrows at you. "The raising of children, I mean. And the generating of them, I suppose, as we've no soldiers to go about breaking down doors, and I'm not sure I'd be willing to allow that if we did."

"No," says Kanaya, "I think I would rather prefer donations to be considerably more voluntary, this time. I see little reason to require a certain number or type of pails... timing might be a little bit of an issue, though..."

"But the raising?"

"We do seem a little short on lusii." Kanaya frowns. "We're still searching, actually; there are at least a few tribes. We'll have to determine how the original arrangement was made. Failing that, I suppose we could attempt to rear them communally, though all my knowledge of troll nature suggests that would be, as they say, a trainwreck. It is a thorny problem; have I mentioned I am in no hurry to begin the process? The magnitude of the arrangements that must be made is staggering, and there appear to be no impending disasters to force our hand."

"I admit that's a bit of a relief." You stroke her hand; she must have painted her nails again while you were out, you don't think the green lightning was there this morning. "It seems the sort of thing that would impact our lives rather a lot."

"It will be a great responsibility," Kanaya agrees. "But I believe that we can weather it."

That's not all there is to say on the matter-- there are volumes more of questions to be answered-- but many of those questions will be unknowable until they are asked; it's simply unreasonable to expect to already have their answers.

"I wonder if that is indeed all the options," says Kanaya. You look up; her eyes are on the notebook.

"I can't fathom there being others. There's no one else on the planet, and it's only iterations of ourselves in the remaining dreambubbles-- not that I imagine one could... I'm going to stop imagining now..."

"Well, it just occurs to me, that we have not exactly analyzed our genetic codes," says Kanaya.

It takes you a moment to understand what she is saying-- and then your eyebrows jump so high it's almost painful.

"That... seems exceedingly unlikely," you say.

"Perhaps; but we haven't exactly tried." 

You stare at the notebook. "I have no idea whether I'd even want to," you admit. "There's the survival of the species to consider... but I already have Roxy, and we'll have the entire future troll race; my fledgling maternal instincts may be entirely subsumed."

Her hand tightens on yours; you look up, to see compassion in her eyes, not judgment nor wariness. 

"We'll do the best we can," she says, "whatever that happens to be."

Flooded with relief, you simply nod, squeezing her hand back. For once, you think, you are lost for words.

"Ah!" she exclaims suddenly. "The cock is burning!"

She is too distracted by rushing to the oven to notice the strangled choking sound you make. "Ah, that's good, it's only a little singed. Are you all right?"

"Who... told you the name of that animal?" you ask carefully. You're betting on Dave.

"John did, why..." She scowls. "Is it called something else? Was he 'pranking' me again?"

Ah; of course. Somehow you always manage to entirely forget about John's prankster gambits. You're going to have to have words with him sometime soon. "Yes and no. I'll explain-- did you leave the feathers on?"

"Of course I did, what kind of silly question is that?"

"I'm not entirely sure." You get up; your further conversations will have to wait until tomorrow. Dinner is about all you're going to be able to handle tonight.

-

When John knocks, it's at the second-story window. "Hey again, Rose!"

You sigh; you've boarded up the window in your bedroom, so this habit is only a moderate annoyance. You close your laptop and rise to meet him. "Hello, John."

"Did you talk to Jade?"

You glare mildly at him. "Did you talk to literally anyone else about your concerns before sending me on this fact-finding mission?"

"Well, no," John admits. "I didn't want to be weird about it."

As if this hadn't been. "Well, if you had spoken to literally anyone, you would have discovered that she is alive, well, and currently investigating our current agricultural difficulties."

"Agricultural difficulties?"

"We can't grow anything," you specify.

"Oh." He frowns. "That sounds bad. And important."

"Well, we're on it."

"Oh, well, that's okay then." He beams with perfect confidence. You could almost forgive him. "Thanks for checking up on her."

"You could have yourself," you point out.

"Well..." He fidgets. "It's just kind of... weird. I think she's mad at me."

You can think of a few responses to that; you decide to go with the most neutral, drawing him out. "Oh?"

"I don't know, it's just that every time we talk, it seems like we get into some stupid fight. And I mean a really stupid fight. She'll get mad over something and I won't even be sure what it is. I can't go for five minutes without annoying her, and I don't know why."

You drum your fingers against the windowsill, pondering. "Are there any topics in particular that seem sensitive?"

"No!" he cries; he seems genuinely upset. "I've tried to figure out if it's some particular thing, but it seems to happen with everything! Once I was talking about Fruit Gushers and she started yelling at me! She always starts out all happy like she missed me but then..."

He sighs, his shoulders slumping. "I don't know what I did."

You suspect you do. "What sorts of things do you talk about?"

"I don't know! What people are doing... crappy movies... one time she got upset when I told her haw shitty a movie Con Air is, I don't know why she would care, she said herself she's never even seen it..."

You frown. "I thought you adored that movie."

"Well, yeah, but that was years ago!" he cries irritably. "I'm totally embarrassed about it, I realized ages ago it's a steaming pile of shit."

"Huh," you say. "I didn't know that. It seemed rather a cornerstone of your identity."

"But I grew up, I changed my mind," he says. "She should know, she was there when I figured it out!"

"No," you correct him, "she wasn't."

"But it was my birthday, and we were--"

"And you were dead," you remind him.

He blinks. "...Oh," he says. "I forgot."

It's an awfully big thing to forget, but your lives have been awfully complicated things. "She wasn't there to see you grow up," you tell him, because you suspect you should lay it out as explicitly as possible for him. "Whatever happened during those three years didn't happen to her. She doesn't know how you've grown. She knows the old you, the one who died three years ago, just like I do. Whatever you shared in those years? It's gone. So try to keep that in mind when you talk to her. She was alone for a very long time."

"But that's not my fault," he says.

"No," you agree. "But you're going to have to live with the consequences regardless. Which reminds me." You check under the desk, pulling out a thin sheaf of papers from the printer. You roll them up into a thin rod, and bop John over the head with it.

"Hey! What was that for?!"

"It's the Wikipedia article on bisexuality," you tell him. The articles on pansexuality and the Kinsey scale are also in there, but you see no need to overcomplicate the issue initially. "Dave suggested you ought to be hit over the head with it, and, given what I've seen of your exchanges, I entirely agree. I assure you, you will much prefer this to his alternate suggestion of what should be done with it."

"Oh, I just bet I do," he grumbles, and starts when you shove the papers into his hands. "Hey!"

"I'm serious," you say. "Read a little. Expand your mind."

"Ugh." John scowls down at the papers. "Sometimes it's like I came back and you were all entirely different people."

"Sometimes it's like you came back an entirely different person," you counter. "It may not be your fault. It isn't ours. But we will all have to deal with the consequences regardless."

John looks at you a moment, like he wants to protest, but sighs instead. "Thanks, Rose," he says, "I guess."

"You're welcome," you answer, and close the window as he turns to fly away.

-

TT: I have done you a favor.  
TG: oh god  
TG: this can bring me nothing but trouble  
TT: I met John today.  
TG: did you shove the wikipedia article on sexuality up his ass  
TT: No, I merely hit him over the head with it.  
TG: but the delicious irony  
TT: Was outweighed by my profound personal disinterest in John Egbert's ass.  
TG: fair enough i guess  
TG: is this the part where i owe you my firstborn child or some shit  
TT: I prefer not to trade in that currency.  
TG: cause ive read the stories  
TT: I am a Seer, Kanaya a Sylph, neither of us are a Witch.  
TG: jesus fuck would you quit acting like those titles mean a god damn thing  
TT: Would you quit pretending that they don't?  
TT: They were assigned based on our personalities and abilities.  
TG: yeah and the color test i took at school said i was a green  
TG: and yet the cosmic whatever appears to have assigned me red  
TG: its almost like its arbitrary bullshit  
TT: Yes, I am aware of the existence of flawed personality tests, and the dangers of self-reporting.  
TT: I am even aware of the Barnum effect.  
TG: and that would be  
TT: The mechanism driving the acceptance of horoscopes.  
TT: Vague enough descriptions will apply to nearly anyone.  
TT: These descriptions are hardly vague.  
TG: arent they  
TG: its not like they were even written down anywhere  
TG: didnt you just hear it from ghost past spidertroll or something  
TT: There were considerably more sources than that.  
TG: look im just worried ok  
TT: What on earth about?  
TG: i mean i dont trust that sort of thing  
TG: i dont trust supposed to be  
TG: i mean among the things im supposed to be are cool straight and perpetually impaled  
TG: so youll forgive me if i am a trifle wary of sburbs intentions there  
TT: Are you mocking me?  
TG: no  
TT: That's exactly what you would say if you were mocking me.  
TG: mother of fuck  
TG: i just dont like it  
TG: assigning everyone to its little boxes  
TG: like people fit in boxes  
TT: People do, in fact, fit into boxes.  
TG: yeah all the time we call them coffins  
TG: have you ever seen the pictures of like the square fruits  
TG: they take the fruit when its young and they put a bottle or whatever around it  
TG: and the fruit grows up and its shaped like the bottle  
TG: cause it doesnt have any other way to grow  
TG: and im worried ok  
TG: i dont want you to be that fruit  
TT: But we'd make such a lovely pair.  
TG: and i am gonna ignore the gay joke youre gonna make because seriously  
TG: i dont want you to box yourself in  
TG: i dont want you to think thats what you are or what you have to be  
TG: look i dont fucking know maybe youre a seer of light maybe youre a feeler of ass i dont know and i dont give a fuck  
TG: but you are more than that  
TG: you are whatever you goddamn want to be  
TG: and maybe a seer of light is what you want to be ok whatever  
TG: but if you are its not because sburb or whoever the fuck told you to  
TG: you make the choice  
TG: its you  
TG: and if you dont like it you can make another choice tomorrow  
TG: can we agree on that at least  
TT: You know...  
TT: I believe we can.  
TG: thank fuck i hate it when we argue in circles  
TG: been a fucking merry go round of obtuse philosophical bullshit  
TT: More obtuse philosophical bullshit versus "fuck the power", I'd say.  
TG: i am ok with that characterization  
TT: But we can dispute the benevolence of SBURB some other time.  
TT: I have to see a woman about a tomato.  
TG: is that what were calling it on this planet  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Yes, it is.  
TG: well far be it from me to criticize anyone elses bedroom talk  
TT: See you tonight, if I don't get too distracted by daffodils.  
TG: i didnt know thats what were calling it now but i think i approve  
TT: Send Karkat my continued condolences.  
TG: yeah yeah  
TG: see you on the flip side

-


End file.
